


(Dodge the) Snowball

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [28]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Communication Failure, M/M, Misunderstandings, Other, and aziraphale has anxieties about that, but it all works out in the end, but this is a good start, crowley gives himself so completely it's a little intense, it takes them a second but they work it out i promise, they have a lot of conversations like this in their future, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 28 of the incredible advent calendar of prompts.Aziraphale has some concerns about the way Crowley gives himself so completely, and it only takes a snowball to force it all to light. Well. A snowball, and some prodding.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 14
Kudos: 157





	(Dodge the) Snowball

Crowley narrowly dodges the snowball, dropping Aziraphale’s hand to do it, though he does catch the “Sorry!” that a freckle-faced kid tosses at him as he barrels past. Well, presumably freckle-faced; the kid is swaddled in so many layers of bunched scarf, it’s hardly a surprise he can’t see to aim. Crowley assumes he’s freckle-faced. He’d sounded the sort, at least.

He chuckles and shakes his head as he picks up Aziraphale’s abandoned hand, then tucks it safely in the crook of his elbow as they continue strolling. But when he looks over, angling to buss the angel’s cheek, he finds a frown there.

“Angel?”

“He should be more careful,” Aziraphale mutters, eyes firmly on the presumably freckle-faced kid’s puffy green jacket. “He might have hit you.”

Crowley shoots him an incredulous look from behind dark glasses, then tilts his head to direct the look over the rim. Aziraphale doesn’t see it, too focused on the child as he weaves around, dodging snowballs.

“It was a snowball, angel. Even if it had hit me, it’s hardly a grenade.” Not that a grenade would do much, anyway. Maybe if the snowball was made with holy water. Holy snow? Is that a thing?

Aziraphale says nothing, frowning now at the whole host of kids cavorting in the snow as indulgent parents watch from nearby benches, faces wreathed in steam from close-clutched coffee cups. At least one parent feels the weight of angelic disapproval; she shifts in her seat, looking around with an apologetic frown, but her eyes slide right over the duo strolling past. Aziraphale frowns harder. “Crowley -”

“’M a demon, Aziraphale,” he offers in answer, both to the admonishment of making them go unnoticed and the protest lingering there. Aziraphale has been oddly recalcitrant, this whole afternoon, has been cold and withdrawn, even though the walk had been his idea. Crowley attempts to lighten the mood. “One wayward snowball is not worth a fuss.”

Unswayed, Aziraphale scowls openly now. Crowley directs them, swiftly but surely, past the shouting children and snow missiles, steers them straight to the duck pond and their usual bench. Aziraphale sits, stiff and prim and with a general air of disapproval, and Crowley stifles a sigh as he sprawls.

“They’re just kids,” he says finally, when the silence has gotten to be too much. Aziraphale is scowling at the empty duck pond. “Having fun.”

The distant shrieks of a snowball-armed horde are not quite enough to drown out Aziraphale’s response, although they try. “You get cold.”

Crowley, uncertain if he’s heard right, sits up a little. “What?”

“You get cold,” Aziraphale answers firmly. “You get cold so easily, Crowley, and if that snowball had hit you -”

Crowley stares in disbelief. “That’s what - you -”

“- and you hardly ever dress for the weather properly -”

“Now hang on -”

“- and it was my idea to walk in the park and I just can’t bear it!” Aziraphale turns to look at him, finally, and a shock runs right through him, shivering down his spine, when Crowley realizes his angel’s face is wet with tears.

“Angel -”

“And you’re _shivering_ ,” Aziraphale wails, getting to his feet. He tugs off the scarf wound around his neck - tartan, of course it is, Crowley had gifted it to him one Christmas at the Dowling estate and now it’s back to haunt him.

“’M not -” Crowley protests, but it’s too late; Aziraphale is wrapping the scarf around his neck, and the fuss he could make about refusing isn’t worth the distress on the angel’s face. Besides, it’s warm - warm where it hugs his neck, warm from Aziraphale’s skin, though not as warm as his face as Aziraphale fidgets, fluffing the scarf up to his ears and tucking it into the collar of his fashionable, but admittedly not entirely seasonally appropriate, black coat. Warm as his chest as Aziraphale dips his fingers here and there, tucking the scarf deeper, tugging the coat tighter, blocking out any avenue for the chill to creep in.

Warm as his heart, as it melts all over the place.

“We’re going.” Aziraphale grabs Crowley’s hands, tugs him upright with hardly an effort. Crowley’s heart melts its way through all his limbs. “Right now, we’re going home.”

He barely manages to grab Aziraphale’s hand before the snap. “Angel - Aziraphale, _wait_.”

“Crowley, you’re _cold_.”

He couldn’t be warmer if he were standing in Hellfire, not when Aziraphale is looking at him like that, concern and worry and _love,_ so much love, in every line of his face. “’M not cold,” Crowley replies helplessly. “Not - angel, it’s fine, I promise.”

A tear spills over, off its perch on Aziraphale’s lower lid, and Crowley wipes it away with a thin-gloved thumb. He wants to feel the angel’s face under his hand, wants to miracle the glove off, but it might push Aziraphale right over the edge of fretting and into full overprotective angel mode, land them on some hot tropical beach before he can explain. “Angel - oh, angel, don’t cry. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“You were shivering,” Aziraphale protests wetly. “You were shivering and it’s my _fault_ -”

“What? No, no.” He presses their foreheads together for contact, because another second without touch is going to do him in entirely, then decides _bless it_ and miracles his gloves into his pockets anyway, takes Aziraphale’s face in his hands. “I wasn’t - that was _you_ , angel, because -”

“Because I dragged us out here -”

“- because you blow me away, honestly, with how much you love me, angel,” Crowley continues loudly over Aziraphale’s protest. Then, when the angel goes quiet under his hands, he adds, “You didn’t drag me anywhere. You asked to take a walk, and I said yes.”

“Of course you did,” Aziraphale counters miserably. “As if you’ve ever said no to me, Crowley, even when it might hurt you. _Especially_ then.”

Startled, Crowley pulls back, searches wet blue eyes from over the tops of his sunglasses. “You - I haven’t -”

“You always have,” comes the reply, along with a fresh well of tears. “You’d never said no before, and now -”

Crowley surges forward, traps the rest of Aziraphale’s words with his mouth, kisses him long and sweet and slow in an attempt to pour out his own reply in something stronger than words. _Of course I won’t,_ he tries to say. _I can deny you nothing; I love you too much._

When he pulls back, shaking and breathless, it is to find the bookshop around them.

“Was that a tessst?” he asks, waving his glasses off to their customary place on the table so he can level a properly suspicious squint at Aziraphale. “Were you testing me?”

“More myself than you,” Aziraphale admits. “And I failed, Crowley.”

“You - what? I don’t follow.”

“I can’t take everything you offer me, Crowley -” he begins, then grabs Crowley’s shoulders when the demon makes to twist away. “No, listen, _listen_. You give me _everything_ , Crowley, and it’s - you amaze me, my love.”

This time it’s Crowley who is crying, Aziraphale who gently thumbs the tears away.

“This is not a rejection,” Aziraphale says, slow and careful as if Crowley might not hear him otherwise. “I _will_ take everything you give me, Crowley, even when I shouldn’t. It’s dangerous; I’ll hollow you out, hold you open and live inside you if you let me, and I don’t want that. You offer yourself so completely, my love, and if I’m not careful I’ll consume you.”

The words, the gentle tone, the press of Aziraphale’s hands in a desperate grip on Crowley’s shoulders somehow make it past the panicked drumming of Crowley’s heart, settle in his chest. Yet he takes away exactly the wrong message, directs his miserable discovery to the floor.

“I scare you.”

“ _I_ should scare _you_ ,” Aziraphale counters, and that sinks in; Crowley’s eyes snap up in surprise from where they’d been contemplating the rug, only to find fresh tears on the angel’s face. Crowley wipes them away without thinking. “I don’t want you to just say _yes_ to me, Crowley, I want - I want _you_ , I want all of you, everything that includes, _no_ and arguments included. Especially the arguments.”

“I argue,” Crowley protests. 

“But you haven’t -”

“I’ve been arguing today,” he points out. Aziraphale huffs.

“That’s not -”

“No, hang on,” Crowley insists. “We’ve argued today - are doing, right now.” Aziraphale huffs again, but there is a realization dawning on his face, a light to chase away the shadows gathered in his eyes. “I haven’t needed to say no to you, Aziraphale, because you don’t ask for anything unreasonable. Dinners, drinks -”

“A play,” Aziraphale interrupts meaningfully, “that you didn’t even like.”

“A play,” Crowley allows, smiling, “that I didn’t prefer, but it put such a smile on your face, and _that’s_ what I really wanted.”

The soft _oh_ that drops from Aziraphale’s lips is everything; Crowley can feel his heart, no longer a thundering terror in his chest, ooze back into a melted mess. 

“I like doing things for you. With you, too. So today, when you asked about a walk in the park - I _wanted_ to do it, to take a romantic stroll with you, in the snow.”

“But you don’t like the cold. And - it’s not good for you, Crowley.”

“A little brisk air is not going to do me in, angel,” he replies, laughing now. Aziraphale is softening, the worry that’s been eating at him all day easing away. “We were having a perfectly romantic walk in the park, and I say we go back.”

“No - Crowley, it’s too cold for that -”

“ _I say_ we go back,” Crowley repeats, and snaps them back to the spot they’d vanished from, right there in front of their bench.

This time, when Aziraphale frets and gestures thick gloves into being, tucks Crowley’s hands into them - this time, when he’s crying, it’s tears of helpless laughter, tears of mirth as Crowley pouts and protests and purposefully makes the process into a whole ordeal. This time, they’re both smiling as they take a full turn around the park, take their time, passing the still-rampaging snowball army. This time, a narrowly avoided snowball - and a chorus of young apologies, shrieked out on the run - elicits chuckles from the both of them. This time, they return to the bookshop via Bentley, the way they’d come, holding hands in the front seat.

This time, it’s perfect.


End file.
